


Coming Home

by jayjaybee



Category: Holby City
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-17
Updated: 2016-11-17
Packaged: 2018-08-31 14:24:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8581936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jayjaybee/pseuds/jayjaybee
Summary: Bernie emails Serena. (Kind of).





	

The email comes the day after Robbie is discharged.

 

> **from** : berenice.wolfe@kch.com.ua  
>  **to** : personnel@holby.nhs.co.uk  
>  **c.c**.: henrik.hanssen@holby.nhs.co.uk, ric.griffin@holby.nhs.co.uk, serena.campbell@holby.nhs.co.uk
> 
> re: date of return
> 
>   
>  Dear Sandra,
> 
>   
>  further to our earlier telephone conversation, this is to confirm that I intend to resume my position at Holby City on 22 November 2016.
> 
> With best wishes,  
> Bernie Wolfe

  
Serena waits, all day, for something else. For a note from Bernie. An explanation in an email. In a text, even. A phone call. But her phone remains silent, and the only texts she receives are from Jason, and though, every time she returns from the ward to her computer her inbox seems to have filled up at an alarming speed, there is nothing, nothing at all, from Bernie.  
  
After six long weeks it is not how Serena had imagined hearing that Bernie would return. And yet, she supposes, it is precisely what she should have steeled herself to expect.

***

‘What’s this?’  
  
Jason is inspecting the calendar that is attached (by means of a magnet of a donkey with ‘Greetings from Weston-Super-Mare’ emblazoned on its saddle) to the fridge door. Serena has spent the five minutes before she started on dinner transcribing her shift patterns for the coming fortnight on to it, and now he is scrutinizing her handiwork. Her shifts are all logged in her Outlook calendar of course, automatically updated weekly by Personnel. But, for Jason’s sake, she has taken to copying them onto the calendar too. He likes to know where she will be, and when she will be there, so he can ready himself accordingly.  
  
‘What?’  
  
‘This…squiggle, and a B. On Tuesday the 22nd. What is it?’  
  
‘That? – oh, it’s nothing.’  
  
‘It must be something, or else why would it be on the calendar?’ he persists. ‘Is something happening that day?’  
  
Serena busies herself at the cooker, stirring a pan, hefting a pot to drain its contents in the sink: if her face is flushed, she would, if questioned, insist that it is from the steam, from the heat. Not for any other reason.  
  
‘Can you set the table please?’ she says instead of answering.  
  
Jason moves to the cutlery drawer. ‘But what does it mean? It must mean something.’  
  
Serena is spooning sauce into pasta, and pasta onto plates. ‘It’s just – Bernie. Is coming back to work. On that day.’ Serena looks up at Jason, to gauge his reaction, perhaps also to judge her own reaction by what he reflects back at her. ‘She emailed today,’ she adds.  
  
Jason nods sagely. ‘I knew she would,’ he says, as he moves to sit at the dining table. ‘I knew she would email you.’  
  
‘Well – ‘ Serena is about to correct him. Because, of course, it is not her, strictly that Bernie has emailed, not really, not directly -  
  
‘I knew she would come back,’ Jason is saying. ‘You can be happy now.’  
  
‘Jason – ‘ Serena says, not sure at all that happiness, or anything like it, is on her immediate horizon.  
  
He smiles at her, benignly. ‘Yes?’  
  
She shakes her head. She doesn't want to get into this. ‘Never mind. Eat your dinner, eh?’

 


End file.
